What is the Big Deal about Thanksgiving?
Separating fact from fable is no easy chore when investigating the origins of Thanksgiving. Fully feathered Indigenous tribesmen mingling among stove-piped, black-booted, black-belted Englishmen sampling turkey legs and pumpkin pie seems sufficient to frame the event.
But there is more to the story.
Plymouth’s first Thanksgiving originated with a few fowlers hunting geese and ducks – and perhaps a Turkey or two – returned with enough game to “serve the company for almost a week.” While preparing their birds, 90 or so Wampanoag made a surprise appearance at the settlement’s gate, no doubt unnerving the 50 or so colonists. The Wampanoag contributed venison, fish, eels, shellfish, stews, vegetables, and beer. After a hearty feast, the men fired guns, ran races, and sipped distilled beverages. By twilight, the entire disorderly affair concluded with a sealed treaty between the two groups that lasted until King Philip’s War (1675-1676).
And then?
The New England colonists commenced practicing regular days of “Thanksgivings.” Focused first on prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God, the Pilgrims voiced gratitude for military triumphs, rain following a long drought, and provision in the hardscrabble, hostile country of the Northeast. The U.S. Continental Congress proclaimed a national Thanksgiving upon the enactment of the Constitution, yet after 1798 the new U.S. Congress left Thanksgiving declarations to the states.
When did it change?
It took a war. A long, rancorous schism between the states. In the fall, following the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln, on October 3, 1863, proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26, only the third federal holiday to be declared.
A Proclamation: For a Day of Thanksgiving, Praise, and Prayer
Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation
“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
“In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
“Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
“It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
“In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.”
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State